A Lexicon of al-Farra's Terminology in His Qur'an Commentary, with Full Definitions, English Summaries and Extensive Citations.

• Author: Gully, Adrian

By NAPHTALI KINBERG. Handbuch der Orientalistik: Der Nahe und Mittlere Osten, vol. 23. Leiden: E. J. BRILL, 1996. Pp. 27 (English) + 1004 (Arabic). HFI 598, $386.50.

This enormous volume by one of the world's leading authorities on al-Farra (d. 207/822) constitutes a meticulously researched document based on the famous commentary by al-Farra on the Qur n. Ma ani l-Qur an is a particularly important work because it is one of the most comprehensive of the early commentaries on the Qur an, and because it was written by a grammarian who is normally associated with the views of the so-called Kufan school of grammar. Kinberg is quick to point out in his introduction the originality of many of al-Farra's views, not only with regard to earlier grammatical works, but also in the light of what are often held to be characteristic grammatical teachings of the alleged Kufan tradition.

The bulk of this work - more than 1000 pages - is devoted to the lexicon itself. The most important syntactic, morphological, phonetic, and prosodic terms are listed in alphabetical order according to Arabic roots. The lexicon contains extensive quotations from the Ma ani l-Qur an of the technical and non-technical terms pertaining to these categories, which in the author's view provide perhaps the most significant justification for a work of this kind, since "much of the originally non-technical terminology became technical at a later stage" (p. 21). Under each entry one finds one or more definitions in English of each term followed by, in some cases, copious citations from the primary text which often contain further references.

The introduction to the work is interesting, particularly in the way that Kinberg relates al-Farra to some of his predecessors and contemporaries, but it is rather brief. In defense of this, however, it must be said that the objective of this section was clearly subordinate to the lexicon itself. Almost no works of this type, or magnitude, have been compiled to date in the field of Arabic studies, although we do have Gerard Troupeau's Lexique-Index du Kitab de Sibawayhi (Paris: Klincksieck, 1976). Kinberg's translations of the Arabic terminology are well thought out and thorough, although some specialists will no doubt happily take...